When the Fort McKay Group of Companies first began working on Syncrude’s Mildred Lake site, you could count the number of employees on two hands – and have several fingers left over.

Today, the Group employs more than 1,000 people who do everything from move earth in the mine to deliver mail to reclamation to supply chain management. There’s virtually no part of Syncrude’s sprawling operations untouched by the Group’s services.

The growing amount of business with the Group, owned by the Fort McKay First Nation, helped Syncrude achieve a major milestone at the end of 2017. Syncrude spent a record $342 million in 2017 with Aboriginal-owned businesses to surpass the $3 billion mark in total spending since 1992, when the number first began to be tracked.